Spaceship 1

Congratulation to the spaceship one team! Wonder if they'll go for the $50
million orbital prize?






----== Posted via Newsfeed.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeed.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 100,000 Newsgroups
---= 19 East/West-Coast Specialized Servers - Total Privacy via Encryption =---

--
Wow! Those grubs at the Golden Horseshoe Saloon are a good deal!
"Michael Gallagher" wrote in message
...
Congratulation to the spaceship one team! Wonder if they'll go for the
$50
million orbital prize?

Would $50 million be enough to cover the costs of building and launching a
fully resuable space craft capable of carrying three passengers plus pilot
into low Earth orbit twice in one week?

In article nYC8d.417607$8_6.20379@attbi_s04,
"Bootstrap Bill" writes:
Don't know what you're using to post, son, but it's broke

Would $50 million be enough to cover the costs of building and launching a
fully resuable space craft capable of carrying three passengers plus pilot
into low Earth orbit twice in one week?

Not even close. SS1/White Knight cost 20 Million as it stands.
And, while it's a danged good acheivement, it was designed to a flight
profile that minimized teh need for any advanced materials or systems.
(For example, SS1 isn't very fast - only about Mach 2 or so on the
ascent, and a bit less on the descent. That menas that you don't have
to worry about aerodynamic heating, or hypersonic stability and
control, or any of that other fun stuff. So, you don't need exotic
materials, literally millions of hours of Wind Tunnel, Shock Tude and
CFD time,
The X-Prize was about altitude only - you don't need a lot of speed,
just impulse. As you can see, you can do pretty good with a fairly
low thrust long-burning motor. The flights themselves aren't alll
that long, so you can basically build the cabin as a Bathysphere
(Aerosphere?), much like a 1930s high altitude baloon gondola.

Orbiting something is an entirely different matter. In that case,
it's all about speed. Lots of it. Think 25 times the Speed of Sound.
That means huge rocket motors, lots of fuel, a much bigger ship, of
course, and much dicier aerosynamics in general. That's only on the
way up. A couple of orbits is going to be at least 3 hours. That'll
mean a Serious environmental control system. Then there's getting the
whole thing back down. You've got to go fram Mach 25/ 100 miles up to
sitting still on the ground. There's an awful lot of energy there,
and it's going to turn into heat. There's nothing you can do to
escape that. That means a space shuttle level Thermal Protection
System. (And it will have to be a similar system - the re-entry
heating is enough to destroy stuff like Nickel-based metals like
Iconel-X, let alone Weak Girly Metals like Steel and Titanium. The
only way to keep the structure strong is to keep the heat out.
All that exotic stuff adds up, but fast.

At a guess, 500 Million isn't enough. (THat's basically the cost of a
Luxury Boeing 747, these days. A couple of Billion _might_ work. 5
Billion (U.S. Billion, not the British Billion) probably would work.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

"Bootstrap Bill" writes:

--
Wow! Those grubs at the Golden Horseshoe Saloon are a good deal!
"Michael Gallagher" wrote in message
...
Congratulation to the spaceship one team! Wonder if they'll go for the
$50 million orbital prize?

Would $50 million be enough to cover the costs of building and launching a
fully resuable space craft capable of carrying three passengers plus pilot
into low Earth orbit twice in one week?

No, but $10 million doesn't cover the cost of Space Ship One and the White
Knight. Yet they flew. It would seem that the prize need not cover the
costs in order to produce the desired results. Think on that for a while.

Also, it's unclear that the $50E6 prize actually being discussed, requires
a fully reusable craft. It is *not* a case of, "Exactly like the X-prize
only to orbit"; Bigelow will write his own rules, and they may allow for
a spaceplane or capsule atop an expendable booster.


--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
* for success" *
*661-718-0955 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *

"John Schilling" wrote in message
...
"Bootstrap Bill" writes:

--
Wow! Those grubs at the Golden Horseshoe Saloon are a good deal!
"Michael Gallagher" wrote in message
...
Congratulation to the spaceship one team! Wonder if they'll go for the
$50 million orbital prize?

Would $50 million be enough to cover the costs of building and launching
a
fully resuable space craft capable of carrying three passengers plus
pilot
into low Earth orbit twice in one week?
No, but $10 million doesn't cover the cost of Space Ship One and the
White
Knight. Yet they flew. It would seem that the prize need not cover the
costs in order to produce the desired results. Think on that for a while.

Also, it's unclear that the $50E6 prize actually being discussed, requires
a fully reusable craft. It is *not* a case of, "Exactly like the X-prize
only to orbit"; Bigelow will write his own rules, and they may allow for
a spaceplane or capsule atop an expendable booster.

For an X-Prize flight a capsule would most likely be the only way to go. And
even that would be quite an achievement. If someone can do that safely and
cheaply space is all but won. But I doubt that it will be grabbed anytime
soon.

I would really like to see Rutan coming up with something similar to the
feathering mode for orbital reentry but it seems daunting at this time. If
he does you can bet that Boeing/Lockmart will copy it in short order.

On 5 Oct 2004 23:15:59 -0700, in a place far, far away,
(John Schilling) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Also, it's unclear that the $50E6 prize actually being discussed, requires
a fully reusable craft. It is *not* a case of, "Exactly like the X-prize
only to orbit"; Bigelow will write his own rules, and they may allow for
a spaceplane or capsule atop an expendable booster.

I didn't think it was unclear. I thought that it was quite clear that
they had in mind a capsule to be launched on an expendable.

On Wed, 6 Oct 2004 10:30:28 +0200, in a place far, far away, "Henk
Boonsma" made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

I would really like to see Rutan coming up with something similar to the
feathering mode for orbital reentry but it seems daunting at this time. If
he does you can bet that Boeing/Lockmart will copy it in short order.

Bad bet, unless someone else (i.e., a government) pays them to.

Would $50 million be enough(?)

No. It would require some x number of dollars, 200M, 1B, somewhere
around there. A good opportunity to develop private orbital flight was
missed when Beale Co went out of business here in Texas. A former banker
tried to develop a low-cost booster rocket to compete in the sat launch
market. He figured he could sell his boosters for $200M, make a good
profit, and beat Boeing and others in price. I seem to recall he was
also trying to develop his own engines, which I think was a mistake as
the Russians have a comparative advantage in this area.

The booster designs at Beale featured wound carbon construction, not
unlike a large cardboard shipping tube.

I think that his company could have succeeded with 1) a high demand for
satellite launches and 2) more capital. The weak market for sat launches
is not Beale Co's fault. Then there was the unspoken factor of being the
new guy, and since the Pentagon and NASA are used to dealing with the
major industrial companies, Beale would have had a hard time getting a
foot in the door. The amount of capital that Mr. Beale put in to the
company was significant, probably $200 million.

["Followup-To:" header set to sci.space.policy.]

At a guess, 500 Million isn't enough. (THat's basically the cost of a
Luxury Boeing 747, these days.

(I was rather taken by the analogy someone used that the total program
cost of SS1/WK is on the order of two-thirds the flyaway cost of a
single F-16.)

A couple of Billion _might_ work. 5
Billion (U.S. Billion, not the British Billion) probably would work.

The British billion is also bigger values of 1 to start with ;-)

'Course, there's nothing to say that we won't have multiple people
offering multiple related prizes, with varying levels of attatched
strings; the back of /The Case For Mars/ had an interesting digression
on a prize-based scheme (totalling either $10 or $20 bn) to bootstrap a
private Mars capacity on the same scale as the NASA reference mission du
jour. Not proposing it, but it's worth looking at for an idea of how to
structure these things.

--
-Andrew Gray

Boy, you got enough wrong I am not surprise you used Revision as your name.

"Revision" kentnobettsspam@techispdotcom :

Would $50 million be enough(?)

No.

A flat no? How can you know this? Armadillio's appoach sure does not look
like they will need so much. A lot depends on the assumations of what the
final craft must be able to do.

It would require some x number of dollars, 200M, 1B, somewhere
around there. A good opportunity to develop private orbital flight was
missed when Beale Co went out of business here in Texas.

Sorry, but Beal's designs were for cargo, not people. His design could have
helped speed things up, but his rockets were not for putting people in space.

A former banker

I could be wrong, but I think he still is a banker.

tried to develop a low-cost booster rocket to compete in the sat launch
market. He figured he could sell his boosters for $200M, make a good
profit, and beat Boeing and others in price. I seem to recall he was
also trying to develop his own engines, which I think was a mistake as
the Russians have a comparative advantage in this area.

No they don't. Beal was using Hydrogen Peroxide for an oxidizer, the
Russians do not have a large peroxide engine available.

The booster designs at Beale featured wound carbon construction, not
unlike a large cardboard shipping tube.

I think that his company could have succeeded with 1) a high demand for
satellite launches and 2) more capital. The weak market for sat launches
is not Beale Co's fault. Then there was the unspoken factor of being the
new guy, and since the Pentagon and NASA are used to dealing with the
major industrial companies, Beale would have had a hard time getting a
foot in the door. The amount of capital that Mr. Beale put in to the
company was significant, probably $200 million.

Some how you forgot the SLI program, with this Beal found himself competing
directly against the government of the USA itself. He could see this was
unwinnable. The government had declared SLI would meet thier future needs
and that they would not need to buy other matching flights.

Earl Colby Pottinger

--
I make public email sent to me! Hydrogen Peroxide Rockets, OpenBeos,
SerialTransfer 3.0, RAMDISK, BoatBuilding, DIY TabletPC. What happened to
the time? http://webhome.idirect.com/~earlcp